There are all sorts of collections, but a collection of like objects offers the simple pleasure of side-by-side comparison and contrast. It offers training in the range of variations on a theme, and it begs you to select your favorites. Collections are meant to be felt.
We have been running low on Moldavite teardrops and for several years they have been high on our shopping list. Last year we bought what we found offered, but it was only two or three. This year we scored this stunning assortment. When I find one of these, I rarely ask the price. The decision is already made.
I have been struggling to get them pictured, described, and posted to the website, but they exhibit separation anxiety whenever I approach. To really be appreciated, they need to be viewed as a collection. So, here they are, perhaps for the last time all together. I get emotional just writing that.
I don’t know what percentage of all Moldavites are teardrops. They are not by any means rare, but I would guess that they may be something like one in five hundred. A grouping like this represents a very select population drawn from thousands of Moldavites painstakingly collected one by one. I would imagine it is a real thrill to pull a nice teardrop from the sand!
Conventional wisdom, oft repeated, holds that teardrops are the end product of dumbbells that were spinning like propellers until they stretched and parted in the middle. I don’t question that that sometimes happened, particularly with Indochinites, but I’ve never been fully satisfied with that explanation as the whole story. Moldavite teardrops have something to say on this subject.
If these all began as parted dumbbells, there should’ve been quite a lot of dumbbells. But good Moldavite dumbbells are extremely rare. Only 3 or 4 have passed through our business, and there is only one in that group that was truly a classic dumbbell form. The others qualified, but only because there isn’t much competition in that particular collection.
I see no reason at all that teardrops cannot be a primary form, a blob of glass squirting out of the impact with an aerodynamic form dictated by forward flight, its tail streaming out behind, no spinning motion required.
As a scientist, I can’t escape that sort of analysis. But as an artist, poet, and romantic lover of beauty, my mind lingers on the picture of a monster meteorite impact that melted the face of the earth and showered a rainstorm of glorious green glass on the Czech Republic. It happened about 15 million years ago and lasted only a few minutes. This is a collection of Moldavite raindrops from that storm. Just how cool can it get?
Words fail me. Just look at the picture and try to imagine. Moldavite rain!
